Historians: Obama 12th best President

[dudalb]

FDR at 3? He enslaved 10 million Americans and murdered 400 thousand of us.

Oh, here comes your "America should have stayed out of World war 2 and let Hitler and Imperial Japan take over the globe" nonsense.

 

[MikeG]

No this type of rating needs to wait until he is dead and his term is looked at by people who were not alive in his presidency.

The person you were quoting wasn't rating Obama's performance, he was locating him on the political spectrum That doesn't need any great time lag.

 

[Brainster]

So you would also feel that it is way too early for you to judge Obama too? I had a different impression from your other posts, but that's great. I heartedly accept your current position.

Judge the totality of his term? Yes, it's too early. I'm not a fan, but I could be wrong.

As to your presumption that the judges were many Democrats- handy way of dismissing something you don't wish to accept, and maybe true given the general political composition of academia, but stated without any direct evidence. As I noted up thread, the high rankings of many Republicans in this poll, including Reagan as significantly better than Obama (!), are inconsistent with political party or leanings playing a dominant role in the rankings. If most judges were Democrats it seems that they were able to remove themselves from their party affiliation and generate a fairly bipartisan rating.

It's an odd list; most of the people at the top are who you would expect, although I was surprised to see Eisenhower ranked so highly (#6). It would be interesting to see where the historians ranked Wilson and Roosevelt in terms of their pursuit of "equal justice for all."

 

[dudalb]

I also think that Presidents who do a good job in time of severe crisis tend to be regarded as great. That is why Lincoln rates so high.

 

[Noztradamus]

James Buchanan has a headlock on last place because of the damage that resulted from his Presidency:his incompetence and stupidity from 1856 to 1860 was a major factor in bringing on the Civil War.

I would look to homophobia in the historians who rated him last

 

[dudalb]

I would look to homophobia in the historians who rated him last

I always wondered why some gays make a big deal about Buchanan possibly being gay. Having a President that is pretty much considered the worst in US History a member of your group does not exactly make much sense to me. from a PR point of view.

 

[Trebuchet]

Conscription is slavery.

Thanks for the clarification, I didn't understand initially. I'd agree that it wasn't great during VietNam, it but was probably necessary during WWII. And the Civil War. Of course, having been conscripted during VietNam I'm probably a bit biased.